Ithaca College schools update academic program offerings

Students will no longer have the option to take certain courses that have been previously offered in the college’s Professional Certificate Program, the School of Health Sciences and Human Performance, and the Roy H. Park School of Communications, while the latter plans to offer one new program.

The Park School’s graduate program in communications has suspended new student admissions until 2016, although students currently enrolled in the program will still be able to complete their degrees.

Cory Young, associate professor of communication management and design and chair of the graduate study in communications program, said the decision to temporarily suspend admissions was partly due to a desire to keep up with the evolving field of communications.

“We’ve experienced a lot of changes in the communications industries, with social media and all kinds of technology,” Young said. “So we wanted to be able to look at the industry and say what’s happening outside that we can then bring into the program.”

Virginia Mansfield-Richardson, associate dean of the Park School, said the school hasn’t added any new degree programs for this academic year, but expects to establish a new master’s program in text and image in the summer of 2016.

Nicholas Muellner, associate professor of media arts, sciences and studies, said he has been developing the text and image program along with Catherine Taylor, an associate professor in the Department of Writing. Muellner said participants in the program will earn a master of fine arts degree, which is not in either the Park School or the writing department, he said, but rather is its own distinct entity.

The makeup of the program will be a low-residency, summer-oriented model, Muellner said, with a total of 25 months of study across three summers, two winters and independent work in the fall and spring. In the Office of Extended Studies, the professional certificate programs — courses designed to provide educational courses for professionals — have undergone changes. Christine Pogorzala, assistant professor of gerontology aging studies, said the certificate course in gerontology was discontinued before the start of the 2014–15 academic year. Pogorzala said the decision to end the program came after it was determined that the way it ran didn’t work for its target participants.

“I think what we were finding was that when the certificate program was developed, we weren’t able to offer the classes in the context that worked best for people likely to want to complete a certificate program,” she said.

She said the program wasn’t equipped to teach night and weekend courses, when students with day jobs had time. She also said there wasn’t ever a huge demand for the program, even when it first began. Pogorzala said there are three people that are currently enrolled in the program, two of which are actively taking classes.

Students currently enrolled in the course will be allowed to finish, Pogorzala said, but no additional students will be admitted.

Margaret Arnold, associate dean for HSHP undergraduate academic programs, said the school has no new programs. However, Arnold said the recreation management and sport studies programs will no longer be admitting students after the Fall 2014 semester.

Janice Monroe, associate professor and chair of the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies, said the decision to eliminate the recreation management major was due to a program review of the department conducted during the 2012–13 academic year.

Monroe said it was determined that a declining number of students were choosing to major in recreation management. As a result, the department and the HSHP dean’s office decided to discontinue the major and instead allocate resources to further the therapeutic recreation and outdoor adventure leadership programs.

Wayne Blann, professor and coordinator of the sports management program, said the sport studies major was eliminated by the college’s administration after a program review of the Department of Sports Management and Media. Blann said he thinks one of the main reasons the program was terminated was because of a lack of recent enrollment in the course.

Blann said there will still be a sport studies minor, but that the administration has asked the department to examine how the program may be modified.

Dawn Kline, assistant dean of the School of Business, said the school has not added any new programs within the last year. Kline said the school is focusing on maintaining its current programs as well as enhancing offerings within concentrations, such as the school’s new investment track for students majoring in business administration with a concentration in finance.

Both David Pacun, the interim associate dean of the School of Music, and Stacia Zabusky, associate dean for curriculum and undergraduate programs at the School of Humanities and Sciences, said their respective schools have no new programs this academic year.